Nagasaki Lantern Festival

Due to Nagasaki’s history as an international port city, it has Japan’s largest Chinatown and every year, more than 10,000 lanterns decorate the city to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Nagasaki Train Station

This weekend, I went with Scott and some of our English teaching friends who live in my building and we ﻿﻿arrived in Chinatown Saturday afternoon intent on checking out the lanterns and eating some good food. Our wishes were immediately granted as a large dragon lantern hangs over the river near the entrance and the street stalls follow right after. The entire street was covered in beautiful hanging red lanterns. And the food! It was my first experience trying steamed chinese dumplings and I loved them. For ￥100 you could buy a small meat filled dumpling or a roasted sesame ball. We also tried giant shrimp spring rolls, fresh out of the deep fryer, Indonesian style spring rolls, and brave Scott tried Pork Belly on a steamed bun, which did not look appetizing at all.

After getting an afternoon snack we went to explore the main lantern display. At the end of the street was a square lined with gigantic lanterns depicting men, animals and imaginary creatures. There was a garden of aquatic animal lanterns, and a lantern made out of ashtrays and chinese soupspoons. Half of our group, the 1987 babies, were excited to have their picture taken with the giant Year of the Rabbit display, but I was most excited for our Harry Potter fan picture taken underneath a gigantic Phoenix lantern. Yes, I am a nerd.

Lanterns on the river

Afterwards we walked to the other end of the park to see Chinese acrobats where we discovered Dinosaur lanterns and See-Saws. Needless to say, plenty of time was spent here. On the walk back to the hostel we found displays from years past, the Year of the Tiger, the Year of the Dog and the year of the Snake. Unfortunately we never found a statue for the Year of the Rat (yeah, 1984!) but it might have been pretty ugly anyway!

It was a lovely time and I would definitely recommend visiting Nagasaki in time to see the Lanterns!